Canada will withdraw the penny from circulation this year, with the last ever being minted in April. This will save taxpayers an average of $11 million annually.
"It costs taxpayers a penny-and-a-half every time we make one," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty explains. "Therefore we will stop making them."
If you are anything like me, your pennies just sit at the bottom of your purse or in a piggy bank somewhere. I never use them, and when I get them back I sure don't keep them all. Why should we carry around that extra weight?
How often do we want our change back when it's in penny form? And yet now people are freaking out about Canada's decision to phase out the penny.
If you wish to continue using the pennies you already own, you can continue to do so indefinitely. There is no deadline. Why not just donate them to charities? They aren't going to be of much use to the general public, but some people are less fortunate. If you feel like being a little more selfish, why not roll all the pennies you get in the next year and add it to a vacation fund?
Canadian retailers however will simply be asked to round prices up or down to the nearest nickel. Credit card and debit card users, however, will still be paying to the cent. Canada is not the first to eliminate their low currency coin. More than a dozen countries including Israel, Switzerland and Brazil have successfully eliminated single-unit coins.
But it won't only be purchasing items that will change, what about when you want to make a wish in a fountain? You will now be throwing in nickels and dimes. Thoughts will also be costing you a lot more, as a penny for your thoughts just won't do. How will we find luck by picking up a nickel?
This has caused a twitter rage, including many tweets from our neighbors' in the U.S who wish their government would follow the trend.
Jokes have been posted several an hour, on social networking sites. This included one strong message from the CanadianPenny twitter page, "I will live forever in your old purses and seasonal coats."
Have we arrived at a time, where everything is solved online? Is starting an online fiasco really capable of saving a coin that costs more to make than it's worth?
